Every month we take a look at Spotify’s ‘monthly listeners’ counts for several hundred metal bands and compare them side by side to gauge their relative popularity at any given moment. For more on why we’re doing this column and the methodology behind it, read this.
The numbers for July are in, and the pace of growth continues to slow down compared to earlier in the year, with well less than half (153) of the 345 artists listed showing increases in listenership month over month from June. The vast majority of artists listed saw their streaming numbers rise throughout most of the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021.
Some of the biggest gainers in the metal world over the past month included:
- Jinjer (34.98%)
- Light the Torch (27.13%)
- Lorna Shore (243.75%)
- Make Them Suffer (22.62%)
- Red Fang (20.64%)
- Mayhem (33.12%)
- TesseracT (23.04%)
- Rhapsody of Fire (50.62%)
- Deafheaven (115.38%)
- Darkthrone (59.15%)
- Carcass (30.59%)
- Between the Buried and Me (22.12%)
- Eyes Wide Open (42.01%)
- Aborted (52.68%)
- Sojourner (59.78%)
Artists who saw the biggest drops:
- Devin Townsend (-20.10%)
- Author & Punisher (-44.76%)
- Blaze Bayley (-22.99%)
These rankings, it must be stated, are not comprehensive: the bands included on our list were chosen manually, and it is absolutely the case that many bands aren’t included (please email vince@metalsucks.net if you’d like to see them added next month). For that reason, we haven’t numbered these rankings: to do so would disingenuously give the appearance this is a comprehensive list, which it is not.
You can view the most recent chart numbers, along with the entire history of these charts, in the embed below or here.